Newsies
by captainodonewithyou
Summary: It is 1899 and Daisy Johnson is a New York newsie who lives on the streets with her best friend Fitz and just manages to stay afloat - that is, until the price for papers goes up, and she is forced to fight for herself and her friends to keep them from being pushed under. (5 parts) (Static Quake, some Fitzsimmons Brotps: Skimmons, FitzSkye, Jemma&Lincoln)
1. Carrying the Banner

The sky is fading purple when the shuddering of the metal fire escape draws her from the heavy stillness of her slumber and back into the cool and clouded air that sleep had only just shrouded from biting at her skin. Aligning all of her senses takes a beat and a reaching stretch of her aching limbs, back protesting as she draws herself reluctantly upright from the relative comfort of the carefully collected bits of material that serve as her bed.

Her eyes strain through the dusky darkness for the source of the ruckus. A crooked silhouette shifts awkwardly in the still air and Daisy rubs her blurry eyes tiredly with the back of her hand as she fights back the massive yawn that rises up the back of her throat.

"Hey, what are you _doing_?" She calls through the darkness, not bothering to waste the extra energy it would cost to mask her annoyance. "The morning bell hasn't rung yet. Go back to sleep."

The movements don't cease, and she drops her heavy head frustrated back against the cool railing of the escape behind her, trying to smother the ebbing tide of sleep still fighting to regain control of her consciousness. The creaking of the entire metal platform helps, squeaking reluctantly in her ears as her roommate continues to feign deafness.

"I wan' to get to the square before the others," his heavily accented voice finally mutters back through the shadows between them as her eyes familiarize themselves with the darkness. She can make out the light curls on her friend's head as he leans fully on the railing, guiding himself towards the ladder with one hand, brandishing his heavily used, cracking crutch beneath the other. He doesn't tell her why he is getting an early start, but today's added reliance on the rusty railing answers that for her.

She sighs the last wisps of sleepiness from her lungs and rises reluctantly to her perpetually aching feet, watching Fitz continue his stubborn movements.

"You know how many of the guys fake a limp for sympathy?" She asks, tearing her eyes away and reaching into the ratty bag tied to the rail behind her to find her few threadbare possessions still there. She glances over her shoulder, knowing it is shitty consolation but hoping it gives her friend something to hold onto anyway, "that bum leg of yours is a _goldmine_."

He pauses, and her eyes aren't good enough to make out the details of his expression through the shadows that still haven't been broken by the lightening sky – but her intuition is pretty solid, and she is pretty sure he is scowling at her.

"I don' need any of them getting the idea I can' take care of m'self," he tells her dryly as he reaches the ladder. "They think I can' an' they'll lock me up in the bloody _Refuge_ for good."

She clenches her jaw at the mention of the place, suddenly far more attune to exactly how cold the New York air feels against her cheeks. She sharply pulls the little bundle of possessions from within her bag, busying herself with untangling the vest she stole from a clothesline a few weeks back when the balmy summer breezes had begun to carry a chill through the streets.

The metal creaks again and she checks again over her shoulder to see Fitz lowered carefully to a seat, good and bad foot hung precariously over the edge of the escape as he surveys his course of action – looking more like the stray he'd been when she found him than he would ever care for her to tell him.

"Just wait a second," she says, letting out another breath as she bends to scoop her cap from where it had fallen at her feet from within the vest, pulling it over her short hair to successfully trap another bit of warmth, "I'll help you down."

Except he doesn't wait a second, clinging to the railing with two hands as he tries to pivot to face the ladder, making a small noise of surprise when his foot slips from the rung and suddenly he is only clinging to the escape with ten white-knuckled fingers. Her heart jumps in her chest as she stumbles over his abandoned crutch and towards him to grasp his wrists before his hands slip, more relieved than she should be that neither of them have had a real meal in a week so he isn't too heavy for her to help him drag his weight back up onto the platform.

"Are you trying to bust your other leg, too!?" She chides, annoyance back in full as a result of the very sharp and very unwelcome wake-up call to her senses. She sure as hell is awake now.

It isn't too dark to see the glare he throws at her this time, but it is too laced with relief to be angry.

"No!" he snaps, but his face is pale from the shock. "I just wan' ta go down!"

She clenches her teeth, trying to swallow the bad mood that is attempting to settle into place for the day as she turns away from him again, stepping over his crutch to fetch her bag from the railing and probably taking out a little more frustration than she should on the tightly knotted strap.

"You'll be down in a minute, just _relax_ and enjoy the view," she tells him, filling her lungs and closing her eyes before counting to ten and slowly letting the air escape through her nose.

She looks up, when she reopens her eyes, taking her own advice. The glimpses of sky she can catch above the grey buildings are warming up into light pastels of pink and orange that contrast the dark depression of the rest of the city. She drinks the calm beauty of the shades in.

"You are crazy." Fitz breaks the silence after a moment, and despite the words her friend's tone is affectionate. The escape creaks as he drags his crutch beneath him and uses it to rise back to his feet.

"How is hating this dungeon crazy?" She challenges, drawing herself away from the comfort, raising an eyebrow at Fitz. "What is _crazy_ is that the rest of you don't care about being able to see the stars."

He shakes his head, his messy hair beginning to shine in the stray sun rays between the buildings, as he lets out a dry little laugh.

"You see th' stars alright Daisy, no one is questioning tha'."

She grasps the cool railing, peering down at the contrast of the foggy, dark streets below them and shrugs.

"I've seen enough people have the life dragged out of them working their asses off to please the city," she says dryly, watching a tiny speck of a rat skitter out of the gutter and between the cracks in the stones. "It just takes and takes. Call me what you want, but I am _not_ gonna let that be me."

Fitz is shaking his head.

"It doesn't have to be like this," she prods, drawing away from the railing and towards her friend. "We don't _have_ to live like we do day in and day out. Everyone coming here has got the wrong idea. Out West, that's where living is easy," she coaxes and then pauses, eyes drifting to his bad leg and then pointedly back to his eyes. "no one cares about a bum leg in Santa Fe."

The shaking of his head has grown more profuse as she continues, and when she names the city he lets out a long-suffering sigh.

"You've never even been ou'side o' New York. You don' know _any_ o' that."

"Maybe not," she shrugs, even though the truth in Fitz's words stings. "But I sure as _hell_ know that nowhere can be worse than here."

Fitz looks like he has plenty more to say about it, but when he opens his mouth he is interrupted by the first of the five echoing toils from the church a few blocks down the pebbled road.

"Guess that means the time for dreaming is done."

The joke is halfhearted, but she offers Fitz one more small smile before crossing to the broken window set into the bricks that the escape hangs precariously off of. She ducks her head through the shards with a practiced precision, blinking past the darkness.

"Hey! Boys, get a move on," she calls into the shadows that are just beginning to shift in response to the dual disruption of her wake-up call and the church bells, just chiming to a stop on the fifth note. "The papers aren't gonna sell themselves!"

She waits until she begins to hear frustrated complaints in tired voices before she retreats from the window, finding the last few buttons on her vest before moving towards the ladder and helping shift Fitz fully onto it. She watches him reach the ground safely before pulling her messenger bag snuggly over her shoulder, balancing his crutch on an arm and following.

A few of the boys have already gathered when she joins them, muttering a couple dreary "mornings," as she situates Fitz with his crutch and "mornings" them back while they wait on the others.

It is a remarkable smell, all the street rats gathered together – one that they all pretend not to notice anymore. There are a few faucets in the old tenant house that still run water, but soap is a luxury that none of the boys are particularly inclined to put out for, not when they'll only be dirty again after a day in the streets – the only motivation they have to clean at all is that no one wants to buy a pape from a kid that smells like the back alleys of the city. Or at least that is what Daisy tries to tell them, mostly for her own sanity – but it is clear that today, like most days, no one has bothered.

She doesn't say anything.

"Hey Fitz, what's the leg say?" Romeo asks when he pops out the door, "Gonna rain?"

"Oh, uh –" Fitz pauses, touching his knee with a dramatic air and staring past the boys with an exaggeratedly focused expression. "Eh, no rain… partly cloudy… clear by evening."

He stands back upright, grinning around at their laughing friends.

"You've got it made, kid –" Henry chuckles, "that limp alone sells 50 papes a week."

Fitz feigns offense.

"It takes the limp," Romeo smirks, but his tone is nearly consoling.

"He would sell even more if he was also blind," someone else chimes in.

"And mute," Fitz agrees, joining into the game with a smile.

"They'd feel especially bad if he was dead," Daisy adds with a roll of her eyes, "bet he'd make a solid 70 sales a week."

Hunter is the last of the boys to scuttle tiredly out from the house, still rubbing sleep from his eyes – and they are off together as soon as he appears. It is Saturday so they trek two blocks south to the church first, for the stale scraps the Sisters stand outside and give them. Then they retrace those blocks plus another four to Newsie Square where they crowd up against the bright silver sheen of the _World_ 's front gates, finish whatever scraps they are still clinging to – and wait.

Fed, the boys' energy picks up, and Daisy leans against the brick wall and watches them hurl affectionate insults to and fro as the town slowly wakes up along with them – well-dressed people with clean faces passing through the square in what seems like an entirely different plane of existence from Daisy and the boys – never even seeming to see the hoard of dirty children in ripped up clothes just beneath their noses.

But even if they don't see her, she likes watching them - in all of their soft colors and bright faces – she can stare at them all she wants, and they'll never notice. Not from the parallel universe they all live in.

She wonders if the city only treats these pretty people kindly because they have the money to put a nice strong door up to block it out.

"Think it'll be a good headline today, Daisy?" Albert calls over the heads of the other boys, nodding at the blackboard over Pulitzer's wagons behind the gate, where the headline will be written up just before they are let in to buy their papers and take to the streets.

"Dunno," she answers. "Probably not. What do you want it to be?"

He smirks.

"I hope it is somethin real bloody. With a nice clear picture to go along with it."

" _That_ pape would sell itself," she laughs as he returns to whatever conversation he is having with Fitz, and she returns to watching the pairs and trios of real people with real lives press on through the square.

Her eyes falter on a man with particularly bright blonde hair that catches the sunlight and burns a shade of pure sunny gold that is so natural and near in appearance to the light that shines from the sky that she is transfixed. He stands out in an odd contrast to the unnaturally colored clothes dressing the people around him and the stark grey streets they walk on.

She is startled when his eyes settle on her own, subtle and clear like the sky beyond the clouds of the city – _seeing_ her.

He offers her a lopsided smile that makes her heart patter before disappearing past her into the crowd and out of her sight. She doesn't realize she is still staring after where he disappeared until one of the boys prods her shoulder, letting out an obnoxious wolf-whistle.

"And here I thought the great Daisy Johnson was too otherworldly to experience good ole attraction," Romeo smirks, and she shoves his shoulder, glaring halfheartedly.

"Ever consider the issue might not have been that I don't experience attraction at all, but just that I don't experience attraction to _you_?" She asks, sweeping her eyes up his body pointedly and earning laughter and low whistles from the rest of the boys for the hit. Romeo snorts, nodding in acknowledgement of his defeat.

"Hey, they're puttin' up th' headline!" Fitz calls from the fence, and Daisy shifts up against the cool metal along with the others, straining to see the shaky letters being chalked up onto the board in the distance.

 _ **TROLLEY WORKER STRIKE ENTERS 6TH WEEK**_

"Again!?" One of the boy's whines, and the rest join in with their own mumbled disapprovals.

"That ain't news anymore."

They're right – it isn't, and it makes it damn hard to sell.

"Move back," a man calls from within the fence, and Daisy steps out of the way with the others as the boys turn their griping onto the squirrelly Delancey brothers – who scowl at them from behind the safety of the gate and have absolutely no trouble giving shit straight back.

"Come on, move so we can get in and get our papes," she speaks tiredly, but certainly not out of any sympathy for the bullies who are having little success with their harsh biting words - and the boys reluctantly do as she says, stepping out of the way so that the Delancey's can unlock the gate and swing it open.

"What a terrible smell," Romeo muses as he passes the duo, looking them up and down disdainfully. "I hear'd a rumor you boys took money to crush heads at the trolley workers strike."

Morris shrugs, but a smug grin comes over his twisted expression.

"Paid damn well," he says thoughtfully after a moment with a pointed bravado, and Specs has to grab Romeo's arm to keep him from throwing a fist between his eyes.

They file through and Daisy takes the rear, shooting the brothers a threatening glare when one of them snaps something unintelligible at Fitz, certainly completely unbidden - as unlike the other boys, Fitz was rarely interested in discourse of any sort. He pretends to ignore them with the same practice with which he had ignored her that morning, and when they continue snarling after him, protectiveness flames up more fully in her gut.

"Don't be mean," she says coolly as she passes by them, scowling between their two pairs of working legs before remeeting their gazes in turn, "One day one of you might have a bum leg, and I don't think you'd like us treating you the same way."

They glare at her but value themselves enough not to talk back, experienced enough after years of her beating up on them to protect the boys to know better.

They pass the wagons that are still unloading, and Daisy steps past the loitering boys to pick up her papers first, reaching deep into her pocket as she approaches the stacks.

"Morning, Weasel," she smiles bright and sarcastic and the burly man who runs the stacks, and he breaths a long sigh.

"It's _Wiesel_. You _know_ that."

"That's what I said, isn't it?" her smile melts into a smirk as she finally finds the coin in the bottom of her pocket, dropping it in front of him. "I'll take the usual."

He shakes his head tiredly.

"The usual for Daisy," he tells the man beside him, who counts her a stack and hands it over for her to shove into her empty bag. She does, and steps aside as the others begin to follow her lead – griping at Wiesel, buying their papers and slipping back out the gate to stake out the streets.

Daisy hesitates, however – because a few spots back in the line, mingled among the familiar faces of her boys are two faces she has never seen before.

When the girl reaches the front of the line, she requests 20 papers with a nearly comedic air of authority, considering who and what the lot of them are.

"That'll be a dime," Wiesel says, and the girl squares her small shoulders as the younger boy in front of her steps forward to take the papers.

"I'll pay you after I sell them," she says with that same perfect diction and air of respectability, and Wiesel looks so completely affronted that Daisy snorts out loud – quickly covering her mouth with a hand as she watches the riffraff unfurl.

"Funny, kid. Come on, cash upfront."

She hesitates, calm demeanor only cracking when she runs an anxious hand through her copper hair.

"Whatever I don't sell you do buy back, yeah?"

This time it is Wiesel who laughs out loud.

"Certainly, and every time you lose a tooth I'll stick a penny under your pillow," he says sarcastically, and Hunter chortles behind the girl until Daisy shoots him a glare that pointedly reminds him to remember whose side he is on. "Pay up, kid."

She lets out a breath, nodding slowly even if her shoulders have sunk slightly – offering up her dime and moving forward to take the papers from the little boy that Daisy assumes is her younger brother by their matching wideset picture-of-innocence doe-eyes.

Daisy continues to watch as the girl purses her lips and flips down the papers – _counting them._

"Wow," Fitz mutters, limping up beside Daisy with a smirk, leaning sideways on his crutch and watching the girl alongside her.

Daisy shakes her head in disbelief.

"Wow," she agrees.

They watch her count them twice, nimble fingers flipping carefully through the soft pages.

And then she steps back up to Wiesel.

"Excuse me, sir – I bought 20 newspapers and you only gave me 19."

"Are you going t' help her?" Fitz asks, predictable empathy seeping into his tone, and Daisy sighs.

"I probably should, shouldn't I."

"It woul' be nice of you."

Daisy sighs again, deeper this time, but steps back up to the table, pulling the papers from the surprised girl's grasp and holding them out of her reach as she counts them herself. Wiesel looks shocked to still see her there as she slowly goes through the pages, not bothering to actually count them but mocking the girl's movements close enough for it to look like she does.

"She's right," she confirms after a moment, turning back towards the table and holding up her hands in surrender when she snatches her papers angrily back from her - but not looking away from Wiesel. "You owe her another pape. Pay up, kid," she mocks with a confident smirk. The boys chime in behind Daisy's lead, calling out for the new girl to be given what she is owed.

Alone, the girl didn't stand a chance against the men. But by claiming the stray, Daisy has made her more trouble than she is worth – and Wiesel shoves another paper angrily at her chest.

"Give her an extra 10," Daisy adds after a moment, reaching back into her pocket for the last coin she has – eyes on the chubby-cheeked brother who can't be over ten years old – who is watching her back with admiration in his wide eyes.

"I'm not a charity case," the girl snaps, fiery eyes on Daisy. "And I don't want extra newspapers or your help."

"What kind of Newsie doesn't want extra papers?" Daisy asks with a raise of her brow, ignoring the rest of the girl's angry words. "Anyway, don't worry, they aren't for you."

She takes the extra stack Wiesel holds out to her and drops them neatly into the little boy's arms, smiling when his already saucer-sized eyes widen further.

"Believe me," Hunter interrupts over his shoulder, finally putting down a coin for his own papers, "You want her help. This is _Daisy Johnson_. You got her help and you're learning from the best."

The distrust in the other girl's eyes doesn't falter, despite Hunter's shining endorsement.

" _Gee_ ," the little boy muses excitedly, "The same Daisy Johnson who escaped from the _Refuge_ in the back of Governor Roosevelt's carriage!?"

"That never happened, Les," the older sister chides, and Daisy just shrugs with a smile, guiding the kid – Les – away from the stand and helping him adjust his satchel across his small shoulders.

"Hey, how old are you, kid?" She asks when she is happy with the situation of his satchel. He stands up taller.

"I'm 10," he announces proudly, but then hesitates. " _Almost_ 10\. Jemma –" he nods towards his sister, "is almost 18. And I'm almost 10."

Daisy nods, sizing him up with narrowed eyes.

"If anyone asks, you're seven," she tells him, and he nods obediently without a question, but she goes on anyway in a slightly lowered voice, "see, if you're younger you sell more papes, and if we're gonna be partners—"

"Wait, who said anything about partners?" Jemma interrupts – _perpetually_ angry.

"Me," Daisy says, patience beginning to wane, "just now."

She deserves the scowl Jemma throws her.

"If you're so great, why would you want to sell with us?" She asks accusingly.

"You've got a kid brother," she answers easily, "I don't. His face could sell a thousand papes a week."

She still looks dubious.

"Kid, look sad," Daisy orders. Les widens his watery eyes on cue, pulling a pout across his lips and staring emptily into the distance. Daisy nods sideways at the heartbreaking expression, biting down a triumphant smirk as she stares back at Jemma. "We're gonna make millions."

A long moment passes, but Jemma finally nods.

xx

"Factory explosion leaves 3 dead and more wounded!" Daisy calls loudly when she catches sight of a movement at the end of the street, extra motivated now by the lightness of her empty bag. "You heard it here first!"

She feels Jemma's ever-dubious eyes prickling at the back of her neck and makes a point of ignoring it as the man approaches, eyeing the paper with interest. "Read all about it!" she adds, offering it out to him. He nods, taking the paper and dropping a coin in her outstretched palm. She watches him disappear down the road, then smirks back over her shoulder at Jemma.

"Easy," she tells her.

"You _lied_ ," she responds. "You just made that story up!"

Daisy smirks, shaking her head.

"I told him he heard it here first," she challenges. "And he did."

Jemma scowls fully at her, reaching out to pull Les, who is staring up at Daisy with eyes full of admiration, back up close to her.

"Misleading and lying are the same thing. Our parents taught us not to lie."

"My parents taught me not to starve," she shoots back with an unfriendly smile. "Sell papes your way, put them to sleep – it isn't my problem."

Jemma shakes her head, reaching into her bag and coming up with a paper – going on as if she hasn't heard Daisy.

"I've just got one left," she says, and Les swipes it from his sister's hand, hopping out onto the sidewalk as a young woman approaches. Daisy sinks back into the shadows with Jemma, watching the little boy.

"Buy a pape from a poor little orphan boy?" he pleads with the sad look he put on earlier.

The lady begins to shake her head, and he catches on quickly, ducking his little head to the side and faking a gut-wrenching cough that stops the woman in her tracks. Daisy tries to bite back her smile as she glances sideways at Jemma, who lets out a defeated sigh as the woman forks over a dime and takes their final paper.

"You're a natural, kid," Daisy praises as she hops from the shadows after the woman has disappeared. She runs an approving hand through the boy's hair, and he grins brightly, clearly proud of his work.

"This is _so much better_ than school!" He announces with excitement, and Jemma quickly steps between them.

Daisy feels her spirits drop at the reality of the kid's words.

"Don't even think it, Les," Jemma says sharply, holding out her hand for the change he has gathered. He forks it over in three little handfuls from his pockets, and she carefully divides Daisy's share out, holding it out to her but still watching her brother. "This is only until father gets his job back."

An awkward stillness falls between them as Les nods at his sister's words, and Daisy searches for something to fill the pressing silence as she buries her coins into the depths of her pocket.

"Look, lets get outta the streets," she says. "We'll find you two some food and a safe place to stay the night –"

"Actually…" Jemma interrupts, shifting uneasily beneath Daisy's eyes. "Our mum'll be expecting us home for supper."

Daisy recovers quickly, smiling crookedly to prove that the words don't mean anything to her - however taken aback she might actually be. She doesn't often meet kids that've got a home.

"Right, yeah – you'd better get going then."

"You should come to dinner!" Les proposes excitedly, and Jemma actually smiles a bit at the suggestion, nodding her approval.

"Mum is a great cook, she'd love to have you."

But Daisy takes a step away, insides turning at the offer – however kind.

"No, I forgot, I've got someplace to be," she lies, taking another step back into the alley and faking a smile. "I've got someone to meet and I've already kept him waiting."

"Is that him?" Les asks, pointing down the road in a direction she can't see. "He's been waiting."

Her brow furrows as she steps uneasily back out of the alley, following the little boy's pointed finger down the block. A man in a dark suit loiters on the corner, sharp eyes only searching a moment before settling on her.

"Shit," she mutters, glancing side to side as she sizes up an escape route that the new kids won't have trouble following. It is only a beat before the man at the end of the street is making a pointed beeline towards her.

"What is it?" Jemma asks, forehead lining with concern as she looks between Daisy and the man.

"Grab Les," she says under her breath, heart pounding. "Follow me. And _run_."


	2. Unioned We Stand

"Does someone want to tell me why I'm running," Jemma puffs as Daisy slams the wide theater window shut behind them, flipping the lock firmly into place and leaning back against the wall – clutching the aching crick in her side as her burning lungs fight to refill her with oxygen, "because I have not got anyone chasing me!"

Daisy holds up a finger, still gasping in the warm air of the theater and urging the fast pulse thundering against her skull to slow. Jemma crosses her arms over her own heaving chest, watching her with narrowed eyes and waiting for her answer.

"Daisy, who _was_ that guy?" She prompts again with a hint of concern that Daisy isn't quite used to being on the receiving end of – especially from Jemma.

She looks around the comforting orange glow of the upper catwalk of the theater as she draws a few more lung-fulls of air.

"That," Daisy finally says breathily, "was Snyder the Spider. A _real_ sweetheart," she pauses, filling her protesting lungs with another heavy, full breath. "He runs a jail for underage kids – The Refuge. The more he locks up, the more he gets paid."

She spits the words out in disgust, pushing herself back upright off of the cool brick wall and striding past the siblings, towards the ladder down the other end of the catwalk.

"Do yourselves a favor," she adds dryly as she passes them, looking between the innocent wide-eyed faces of her new friends. "Stay clear of him, and of the Refuge."

She lowers herself down the ladder and waits for Les and Jemma to follow before leading them through a set of heavy velvet curtains and back behind the stage with sure practiced steps. The warm orange glow is fuller here, lighting up bare brick walls and thick coiled ropes and scattered canvas backdrops, painted in complementary pastel shades.

"Woah," Les muses, "what is this place!?"

He stares wide eyed between the sets and half-built wooden structures, turning in a slow circle to take everything in until Jemma puts a hand on his upper back to steady him to a stop.

"It's a theater, Les. You know that."

He looks disdainfully up at his sister.

"Well I never seen a theater like this before," he defends, and Jemma drops the argument with a sigh.

"It is the back-part," Daisy tells his still-curious eyes, nodding sideways at the curtains they'd passed through. "The other side is what you see, usually. Back here, it's where things get put together."

She glances at one of the half-painted backdrops, then at her feet.

"Is someone in here!?" The voice comes from the curtains, and a moment later a dark-haired woman in a solemn business-like dress appears through them. Her eyes fall on Les and Jemma, brow furrowing in surprise. "How'd you two get in?" She asks in a carefully hushed backstage voice, "There's no children in the theater."

Jemma and Les open their mouths emptily, and Daisy plants a smile on her face as she steps forward, raising a hand to attract the woman's attention.

"Not even me, May?"

Recognition fills the older woman's expression when her eyes fall on Daisy, lighting up.

"So you are still around," her voice is dry but her eyes are smiling, "I was starting to think you were going to leave me high and dry with all these unfinished backdrops," she adds, nodding at the pretty scenes scattered about.

"'course not," Daisy tells her, but one of May's eyebrows flicks up to call her blatant bluff with ease - Daisy is a good liar, but she still has never managed to get anything past the woman's sharp mind.

Les is wandering again, this time up closer to one of the backdrops with his mouth agape – his sister not far behind him, her own eyes wide as she takes in the details of the strokes on canvas.

"You pictured these!?" Les asks Daisy in awe, and they both look expectantly back at her. She scratches uneasily behind her ear as she shrugs, trying not to notice all the imperfections in the pieces glaring down around her.

"She's got a natural aptitude," May tells him with one of her patented half smiles, eyes never drifting from Daisy's. "By the time you finish this next set I might even have the money to pay you for your trouble," she adds, and Daisy shakes her head.

"Don't get so worked up," she mutters, rolling her eyes, "They're just a bunch of trees. I'm not taking your money."

"They're really good, Daisy," Jemma interrupts, eyes wide.

Changing the focus of attention seems like her best course of action, too many prickly wide eyes all expecting far too much from her.

"We ran into a little trouble, May," she says, "can we stick around back here a while?"

"As long as you need," she answers with a nod, lips twitching a little. "I'll be around – lots to get done."

Daisy smiles her thanks as her friend glances at the kids behind her a final time before disappearing back through the curtains.

"Was that Melinda May?" Jemma asks as soon as she is out of sight, attention successfully averted off of the soft scenes surrounding them. "Doesn't she own a theater?"

"This theater," Daisy confirms, glancing around the comforting space as she considers where to set the sibling up for the next hours - at least until Snyder has certainly left the area. "It'll probably be best up on the catwalk," she finally decides, motioning back towards the ladder. "You can watch the show for free and everything."

xx

She catches sight of the blonde hair without even really seeing him, but she knows it is him by the messy locks regardless – up in one of the side boxes across from the catwalk. She can't get a full look at him from the spot, not really – and she mumbles an excuse to Jemma before she scuttles back down the ladder and into the wing opposite the box he is in, peering up at the focused eyes beneath the familiar golden sheen of his hair. It shines differently in the faux daylight of the theater, less bright and sunny – but still transfixing and foreign – it is a color she can imagine herself mixing paints for hours to try to pin down and still failing, as she has so often tried to capture the sun.

"Who's that?" She asks May when she passes by practically on cue a moment later, nodding up at the box where he still sits, watching the show unfalteringly.

She feels her friend's gaze on her, sizing her up, but she answers after only a moment.

"He's a reporter. I've never seen him around before, he must be new to the game," she pauses, glancing away from him to study Daisy's expression a moment longer. "The door to the box is open."

Daisy shoots her a look that she returns in the form of a knowing wink before turning back off in a different direction – endless work to be done around her theater.

She stares up at him a moment longer before making her decision, slipping back behind the stage and hurrying to reach behind one of the sets she has been painting for a spare piece of crumbling charcoal and an old program. She shoves them into her back pocket before slipping into the other wing up the stairs to the box, letting herself in without a knock.

"This is a private box," he says when he hears the door, not looking away from the show going on beneath them – light eyes narrowed and entranced as they dart between the notebook he is scribbling in and the stage.

She smiles a little in spite of herself.

"You want me to lock the door?" she offers lazily, motioning towards it even though he still hasn't looked up at her.

After she speaks, though, distraction fogs his expression and he peers up – and she could swear recognition crosses through those eyes of his.

She decides to gamble on it.

"Twice in one day," she says, still smiling lightly. "I'd say that's fate, wouldn't you?"

His throat bobs above a swallow, and he tears his eyes off of her.

"I'm working."

She lets him refocus his attention on the stage and his quick scribbles, because she likes how focus looks on him – deliberate and etched lines that are made to fit into his face.

"Working," she murmurs after a moment anyway, testing the word on her tongue… missing his eyes on her. "A working guy. Huh. I don't hang around many guys with real jobs. What _is_ your job?"

She is beginning to wear on his nerves, talking over every other line of the show – she can see it in the little clench of his jaw, and she is suddenly very interested in how his pretty face might look thoroughly frustrated.

For _completely_ innocent reasons, of course.

"I'm writing a review for the Sun," he tells her, "of this show. Which is really difficult to do when I'm not actually _hearing_ the show."

"You work for the Sun?" She says, taking a small step nearer to him and efficiently ignoring his hint about not hearing the show, "I work for the World."

She _does_ , sort of.

"I'm sure there are plenty of people in this theater who would love to hear all about that," he mutters under his breath, frustration making a gentle reappearance in a trio of wrinkles cracking across his forehead as his eyes drift annoyed back up at her. "Go tell _them_."

She likes his blunt way of talking, likes how it gently contrasts the clear kindness in his eyes – likes what an enigma he is. She shifts a bit so she is leaning on the railing facing him, crossing her arms and watching the deep focus set back into his face.

"The view is better up here," she tells him, keeping her smile contained but waggling her brows when he sighs loudly, peering up at her through his heavy lashes.

"Do you make a habit of talking to strangers?" he asks, dropping his pencil defeatedly onto his notebook and crossing his arms as he stares fully at her. "Because I don't."

She hold his stare steadily for a moment, reveling in the odd mix of intrigue and frustration behind his eyes before speaking.

"Then you're going to make a pretty lousy reporter, aren't you?"

He opens his mouth to snap back at her but clearly comes up empty, instead settling on narrowing his eyes at her before turning back to the show.

She moves back towards the door, situating herself against it as she pulls the paper and charcoal from her back pocket, watching his face for a moment with the same attention he is giving the show, memorizing the way the different contrasting lines curve – before starting to scribble over the words on the old program.

It isn't as if she hasn't been with plenty of guys – it is more that she has never particularly been a fan of the soft kind of love Fitz talks about, the "true" love and the love "at first sight" and all the poetic variations of the basic human instinct to be attracted to other humans. She has never quite been able to convince herself attraction is anything more than simply _attraction_.

She isn't sure how the way the light shines off of him makes her question absolutely all of it.

He glances at her as she works now, unable to maintain the same attention to the stage he had before she had interrupted, and she tries not to let it show in her face how much the sideways glances make her heart thud. Finally he sighs his defeat, looking between her and the program she is scribbling on.

"What are you _doing_?" He asks.

She squints at him a moment, and adds another shadow to the page before moving to respond.

"Working," she answers mockingly after a breath. Then she nods at the stage, trying not to smirk as she adds an air of faux authority to her tone, "Quiet down, there's a show going on."

His eyebrows shoot up immediately and she can't fight back her smile any more after finally successfully drawing a full expression of frustration out of him.

"You are the most _impossible_ girl-" he informs her gruffly.

"Shhh," she interrupts, a chalk-darkened finger held to her lips.

" _Ever_ ," he finishes under his breath.

(She isn't sure, but she thinks a tiny smile might fight at his own lips as he draws his eyes off of her, shaking his head.)

She shades one final bit of her drawing, holding it up to compare it to its muse before she is content – dropping it on an empty seat and allowing herself one more long look at him before slipping silently backwards out the door.

She is _screwed_.

xx

She runs a few beats behind the boys the next morning, limbs still aching from the hard chase the night before – and they are in a complete uproar when she arrives, yelling back and forth. No one has bothered to begin to gather into the line for papers, or gather in any way at all except in an angrily churning mob. She tries to seek out Fitz but the moment one of them spots her the lot of them are all crowding her at once, all talking over one another and making it impossible for her to decipher what the hell is actually going on.

"Everyone stick a sock in it," she finally calls loudly over the overlapping voices, pushing past a few of the boys to Fitz. "What the hell?"

He doesn't speak – instead nodding up at the chalkboard she hasn't had a moment to look up at to check the new headline. She follows his movement now, squinting up at the words.

 _ **NEW NEWSIE PRICE: 60 CENTS PER 100**_

She does a double take, reading the letters carefully three times before looking beside her at Fitz for confirmation.

"I coul' barely afford th' price as they were. We're all going t' be living on the streets," he says sadly.

"Fitz, we already live on the streets."

"In a _worse neighborhood_."

She shakes her head, too exhausted to pretend his odd brand of nervous humor is funny – instead rubbing at her burning eyes as she turns back to the other boys who have stayed silent, awaiting her cue.

"Relax, it's gotta be a gag, boys," she says, "Weasel is pulling a fast one on us."

There is an echoing murmur of agreement as she passes again through the ranks, pulling her coin from her pocket as she approaches Wiesel.

"Real good one," she tells him dryly. "You really had the fellas going." She drops the coin in his outstretched palm. "Give me the usual."

He stares at the coin in his hand and looks slowly back up at her, far too much enjoyment built up into his twitchy smile.

"A hundred will cost you sixty," he says, staring at her unblinkingly as he crosses his arms.

The buzz starts up anxiously behind her again as she stares back, unflinching.

"I'm not paying sixty," she tells him stubbornly, hoping her uneasiness doesn't come across in her tone as she glances again up at the headline plastered above them.

The filthy smile sticks across his face and he speaks slowly and meticulously.

"Then make way for someone who _will_."

She shakes her head, reeling from the words and racking for a quick idea as she grabs her coin back from his greasy hand, glancing over her shoulder at the line of boys still waiting for her move.

"Fine," she mutters gruffly, stepping away from the counter and back towards the shining World gates, settling on a plan of action and making a show of shoving her money back into her pocket. "I guess me and the guys are gonna take our business to the Journal."

There is another murmur of agreement as they move to follow her, but she nearly runs into Hunter as he is hurrying back through the gates towards her.

"I'll save you the walk, love – they've upped the prices, too."

She swallows, a new sort of anxiety settling into the pit of her stomach at her friend's breathless words.

"Then we'll go to the Sun," she says, but her voice shakes and Wiesel speaks up.

"The prices are up all around town, darling," he says smugly. "New day, new price. So are you buyin', or movin' on?"

Daisy stares him down again, longer this time as the wheels turn anxiously in her mind.

A dime is two days of eating – _two days_. None of the boys can afford to lose that sort of money and neither can she.

She draws away when she thinks the fear might be beginning to show in her expression – the eyes of all the boys pricking on her skin.

"Hey, everyone come here," she mutters, crowding towards a wagon as the boys close in around her and sinking uneasily onto a stack of papers to hide the quivering of her knees beneath the pressure.

"They can't just do this," one of them mutters fearfully.

"It's their paper, it's their right," says another.

She swallows as the voices raise around her.

"Quiet!" she finally yells over the voices, clenching white knuckled fists at her sides. "Would you all just keep your shirts on and let me think this through!?"

Suddenly little Les seems to pop up out of nowhere between her and the horde of boys.

"Stop crowding her!" he orders, his small voice surprisingly demanding as he shoves the older boys back from where she is sat. "Let the woman work it out!"

He earns her another moment of uneasy silence and she rubs at the bridge of her nose as she searches for anything, any options or answers – but is terrified to continue to come up empty. She doesn't know enough about _any_ of it – their rights, the paper, or who is in charge. She doesn't have any sort of baseline on which to stand, nowhere to start brainstorming a way of fixing what Pulitzer has broken.

She breathes in slowly, trying to fill the emptiness with _something_.

She has no way of working it out.

"Hey Daisy… you still thinkin?" Les asks after a moment, taking a hesitant step back towards her.

"Sure she is," Romeo confirms, "Dontcha smell the smoke?"

She scowls at him, throwing up her middle finger in his general direction – which only seems to amuse him. When the other boys remain standing by uneasily, his laughter slowly dies out.

She frantically delves into a different approach. The immediate problem is clear. _They can't buy the papers._

They can't buy the papers.

She runs an anxious hand through her hair, clenching her jaw tight as the realization hits her hard.

"Alright," she mutters, "Alright, everyone come over here."

Their faces turn hesitantly hopeful at the confirmation of a plan, and she bites at her lip as they crowd back around her.

"If we don't sell the papes, the papes don't get sold," she says slowly, and the boys confirm the sentiment with a few scattered nods.

"So… we _don't_ sell the papes. Not one, not any of us – not till they bring the price back down."

Her words are answered with an anxious buzz.

"Do you mean like a strike?" Jemma asks from somewhere behind the boys, and Daisy considers it for a moment, thinking of the trolley workers and the week after week headlines they made, the buzz they built up through the city.

"Yeah," she confirms, nodding slowly. "Yeah, you all heard her. We're going on strike."

The response is mixed.

"Half of the trolley workers is laid up in the hospital," Alfred calls out uneasily, "the cops beat up on them."

"The cops aren't going to care about a bunch of kids," Daisy says, even though she has no idea – but she seeks out Jemma through the faces for confirmation. "Tell them."

The other girl's eyes have gone wide and doey, and she shakes her head slowly, reaching for Les and drawing him out away from the other boys.

"Leave me out of this," she pleads, "I'm just here trying to feed my family."

The words hit Daisy hard, fiery anger pulsing through her veins as she scurries back up to stand on top of her seat of papers so she can see the other girl over the heads.

"You think the rest of us are here for kicks!?" She asks with a furrowed brow and a raised tone, staring her right in the eyes. She turns away from her and Daisy jumps angrily down, pushing through the boys to grab her upper arm until she snaps back around to face her. " _Hey_. Just because we only make pennies, doesn't give anyone the right to rub our noses in it!"

"It doesn't matter!" Jemma speaks up over her loud tone, shaking her head hard. "You _can't_ strike, you aren't a union."

It gives her a moment's pause.

"Well what if I say we are?" She challenges icily, scowl deepening when Jemma's expression hardens stubbornly.

"There is quite a bit you've got to have to be a union," she answers, not backing down from even Daisy's hardest stare.

It only makes her grow more frustrated.

"Like what?"

"Like _membership_."

"What do you call these guys!?" She asks, pointing behind her at the troupe of boys watching the confrontation go down like it is good theater.

Jemma shocks Daisy by not arguing with her, and instead sighing defeatedly as she hangs her head back momentarily, eyes pressed closed. Then she looks back at her.

"You'll need officers," she says, change in demeanor impossible to miss.

There is the creak of Fitz's crutch behind her as he limps forward. She glances over her shoulder and he smiles reassuringly.

"I nominate Daisy as president," he says, loud enough for all the boys to hear, and an affirming sound of agreement echoes through them.

She isn't sure whether she should be honored by or fearful of the faith the boys have in her – she isn't keen on the risk that she might be the one who lets them down.

She takes a small step back so she is even with Fitz, glancing back to Jemma for the next order of business.

"What'll be your statement of purpose?" she prompts, the words all foreign to Daisy's ears. Luckily, one of the boys speaks out before she has to.

"The hell is a statement of purpose!?"

"It is the reason you have for forming a union," Jemma defines easily, but doesn't look at the boy – still staring at Daisy.

She is thinking about the trolley workers again, the front page stories under her nose for weeks on end.

"Fair wages, yeah?" she says slowly, looking up from her feet as she recalls words, "Safety? Job security?"

The fellas continue to murmur their agreement behind her, and she nods her own affirmation of what she's just claimed, looking expectantly at Jemma for guidance into the next challenge.

"Well," a pause. "if you want to strike, you'll have to put it to a vote."

She doesn't have to ask the question to know the answer, but it is a formality nonetheless and she turns back to the boys, hopping through the crowd to jump back up on her stack of papers and feeling every eye follow her.

"What do you say, fellas?" She asks, raising her voice to be heard clearly in every ear. "Do we let Pulitzer push us around, or do we strike?"

There is no hesitation in the loud, united response.

"Strike!"

She looks at Jemma, and the boys, catching on, do too.

"Now?" Daisy prompts.

"Now?" Jemma repeats thoughtfully, shaking her head. "I guess the strike would be more effective if someone in charge knew about it."

"How do we do that!?" Fitz asks.

"Someone's gotta tell Pulitzer," Hunter realizes out loud.

Daisy is sure she knows who someone is, but she stares expectantly at Jemma anyway.

"I think… I think you would be the one who tells him," she says, and pauses before giving in a bit to the excited buzz around them – smiling and adding, " _President_."

"C'mere," Daisy holds out a hand, urging a still slightly reluctant Jemma closer to her through the boys. "What do I tell him?"

The boys stare at Jemma, and she swallows as she looks out around them.

"Well I suppose you tell him that he's got to respect your rights as employees," she says to the expectant faces before glancing back at Daisy for approval. She nods, and Jemma's voice grows stronger, feeding on the growing energy around them. "Tell them that they can't just change the rules whenever they feel like it."

"We do the work, so we get a say," Daisy adds.

When Jemma looks at her again, there is _almost_ excitement in her eyes.

"We've got a union," she tells her, and a charged muttering travels through the boys at the confirmation.

Daisy stares over the crowd at the headline board they're trying to make, mind whirring as she leaps back down from the stacks and makes a beeline for the ladder up. She scurries to the top quickly, staring up smugly at the perfect view every window in Pulitzer tower has of the board – before scanning the platform for a piece of chalk and puzzling for a moment over what to do when she comes up empty.

Then she remembers the charcoal still pressed in her back pocket.

She snatches it out, lifting herself precariously onto the railing so she can scribble the large black letters right on top of the white ones already there.

 _ **STRIKE**_

Her writing is sloppy but the message is clear.


	3. Divided We Fall

Jemma falls back into the slow pace Fitz and Daisy keep at the end of the trekking boys, still bouncing with the excited energy that fed them earlier. They had stayed outside the shining _World_ gate until the sky started to burn dusky orange - at Jemma's suggestion, of course – to make certain that no one was called in to sell the papers themselves. No one had turned up – and the extent of what that meant was difficult for Daisy's limited scope to fathom. She had made a choice, and the entirety of Lower Manhattan was affected as a result of it.

What they are doing is as big as Daisy's world.

"Tomorrow they'll call in scabs," Jemma tells her softly enough that only Fitz, poised at her other side, can hear, her tone taking on a disgusted edge. "They'll try to replace us just like they tried to replace the Trolley workers."

Daisy nods, remembering the headlines.

"We won't let it happen. We'll go back, as long as we have to. The fellas know you've got smarts, they'll do whatever you say we've gotta."

She bites nervously at her lower lip as the boys in front of them turn off the road, into Jacobi's – the only restaurant in the entire borough that doesn't kick them out every time they walk in.

"If that's the case, Daisy –" she stops, touching Daisy's wrist to motion for her to do the same as the last of the boys slip through the door.

She does, turning slightly to face the other girl and motioning with her head for Fitz to go on ahead without her. Jemma continues after a moment, eyes on Fitz limping through the door before flicking anxiously back to Daisy.

"If we want this to work, to really be successful – I think we need to expand the scope. Lower Manhattan didn't get their news today and that is a _big_ start – but the _World_ is still making sales in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Uptown – Lower Manhattan is just a dent. It isn't enough."

Daisy considers her words a moment.

"You think we need to get the other Newsies in on the strike?" she clarifies, speaking carefully.

Jemma nods, and after a breath, Daisy does too.

"We can do that. I'll send boys out to each of the boroughs, they can talk to the guys in charge. They'll help, I know they will."

Jemma looks less certain, but says nothing. And Daisy knows, understands how much this would be asking of the other kids. But they are in it all together – she and her boys are fighting for all of them, and she can't imagine the others won't be willing to join in their fight.

She swallows uneasily anyway before moving towards the doors of the restaurant, Jemma in her wake.

"Hey," she calls over the loud voices as the doors close hard behind her – peering over the tables they've crowded together and one very tired Mr. Jacobi pinching the bridge of his nose, "hey, Jemma's got another idea for us, everyone listen up!"

She motions sideways at Jemma, inviting her to reiterate the words to the boys – mostly because she is pretty sure she will bang the concept up beyond repair if she attempts to pass it on herself. The other girl has got far better control of her tongue, and Daisy doesn't want to risk what they are doing over a few jumbled letters.

She expects Jemma to be glaring at her for making her the center of the group's unwavering attention, per her usual shy tendencies, but when she takes a seat with the others and looks at her friend, she is surprised to find a focused, passionate glow in her eyes.

"We need to send the word out to the other Newsies," she tells them, voice breaking uneasily but growing in strength, adapting to the position of leadership Daisy has pushed her into. "Get them to join in the strike. We stopped the circulation in Lower Manhattan today but we didn't stop the wagons, and the most certain way to do that is the most simple – let the wagons go, and get the rest of the boys 'round the city not to purchase their papers from them."

The boys react with the same anxious edge Daisy had felt when Jemma first passed the pan on, nervous murmurs going through them – just as she expects. She takes the cue, rising back to her feet and joining Jemma up in front of them.

"We made up this union because we are stronger together, yeah?" She prompts, waiting for the slow nods of confirmation before continuing. "The more of us stand as one, the harder it'll be to pull us down. Yeah, Jemma?"

Her affirmation of the newbie's idea doesn't fully satisfy the boys, but it quells their unease enough.

"We need t' split up," says Fitz after a moment, uneasiness still in his eyes but taking Daisy's back, as usual – staring at her before glancing out over the boys. "Someone needs t' take each borough, talk t' th' guys in charge 'n tell 'em wha' we're tryin' t' do."

Jemma visibly relaxes at the added backup, eyes clinging softly to Fitz as he takes control, leaning up onto his crutch.

"Hunter, take Specs 'n head uptown 'n see Trip," he nods, and continues down the table of boys, assigning boroughs as those remaining grow increasingly twitchy. Finally, the penny drops – "'n tha' leaves Romeo wi' Brooklyn – Morse's turf."

Romeo immediately is shaking his head, hard.

"Uh uh, I ain't messing with Brooklyn. Send me anywhere else, not there."

Fitz begins to argue with him but Daisy speaks faster.

"You aren't scared of Brooklyn, are you Romeo?"

She isn't sure whether or not she expects the tactic to work, but she thinks it might when he jumps defensively to his feet at her words, face contorting in a sort of angry offense.

"I ain't scared of no turf, Johnson," he snaps, holding her stare steadily for a moment before his expression cracks ever so slightly and he sinks slowly back into his seat. "Look but Morse, she gets me a little jittery, alright?"

She tries a new plan, rolling her eyes as she does.

"Fine, Jemma and Les will take Brooklyn."

Jemma looks at her like she has just grown a second nose, all of the previous brawn melted away.

"Excuse me?"

"She'll go easy on a fresh face," Daisy lies, probably concerningly easily. "Besides, you talk best outta all of us. She'll listen to what you've gotta say."

Jemma looks ready to say plenty more about it, but she is interrupted by the creak of Jacobi's door and the gaping mouths of the boys who can see who is entering in behind them. Daisy turns slowly to follow their combined gazes, stomach flipping nervously as her mind flutters around what possible outsider could possibly be causing such a unified reaction.

"What's so bad about Brooklyn?"

It's the blonde reporter, typical pencil and notebook extensions to his hands.

Daisy has to bite back her own gape, situating her face into something that might resemble disinterest.

"I thought you didn't talk to strangers?" She says before any of the boys can speak up to answer him, taking a half a step towards him and still trying to balance his odd presence out in the grey surroundings that just aren't meant for someone like him – not with his clean skin and his bright hair and his ironed clothes.

Seeing him in the streets they share, in the theater that isn't hers – those are things that she can adjust to, places that his presence fits easily into. But it is only in the greyscale of this place that is all _hers_ that she realizes that even though he might see through the veil, he is still very much a part of the parallel universe that lives in bright pastels above their little underground world.

The thought isn't entirely welcome in her mind, but she nails it firmly into place.

"We're not strangers anymore," he says deadpan, but his light eyes twinkle playfully. "We saw a show together last night, didn't we?"

She squints at him distrustfully, suddenly less of a fan of the unpredictability that she is having trouble muddling through. She decides two can play the game he is initiating.

"For a _Sun_ reporter, you spend an awful lotta time around the _World_ ," she muses confidently. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were following me."

The boys back her up with a smattering of nervous laughter as she smirks.

He rolls his eyes, but they are still twinkling in spite of the dig.

"Just following a story," he assures her. "Daisy – it is Daisy, right? Why do none of you want to go to Brooklyn?"

She looks at the notebook in his hand, pencil poised readily over blank pages – and remembers how week after week the trolley worker's strike was headlined in bold on the papes she waves around every day.

"Brooklyn is the 6th largest city in the world," she says carefully after a long pause, watching his expression closely as his focus shifts to the paper he is suddenly scribbling on, "if they've got our backs, Pulitzer will have no choice but to listen to what we've got to say."

He looks up after a moment, but his eyes are on Hunter instead of Daisy this time.

"Is that how you're planning on getting them to give the time of day to a bunch of kids without a nickel to their names?" He asks in a practiced tone, and Hunter looks offended.

"Oi, you don't gotta be insulting!" he says, and lowers his voice conspiratorially as he reaches deep into his pocket, "I've _got_ a nickel."

He is still scribbling, and she tries to fight the feeling of entrancement that edges at her when his face hardens in intelligent concentration.

"So I guess you could say you're a bunch of David's looking to take on Goliath?" He says under his breath, peering up at Daisy through his lashes a moment before snapping his attention back to his feverish scribbling.

It is then that Daisy feels the angry shift of Jemma beside her, stepping up to the reporter with arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"Hey, we never said that," she tells him defensively, eyes narrow with suspicion. "And quite frankly, I think that we ought to save this exclusive for a reporter who actually has a column."

It is his turn to look royally offended, brows furrowing heavily over his light eyes.

Daisy catches quickly on to the weakness.

"You know, I've seen a lotta papers in my time," she agrees, "I have never seen a kid our age writing hard news."

He finally stares back at her, scowling defiantly – and _god_ , somehow this expression is a perfect match to his careful face, too.

"The game is changing," he says, looking between Daisy and Jemma – but his cheeks are burning red. Daisy joins Jemma, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest and staring him down.

"What's the last news story you wrote?" She challenges, taking a small step closer to him – not entirely sure whether her need to one-up him is fully related to the cause or not.

She thinks, _probably_ , not.

He doesn't sway from the challenge, instead taking his own defensive step nearer to her, glaring down at her with squared shoulders.

"What is the last strike _you_ organized?"

His voice is steady and clear, and they stand there a moment glaring at each other while the boys "ooh" traitorously at his quick response.

After a moment of letting his point sink in, he speaks again, leaning down nearer to her as he lowers his voice.

"You see anyone else giving you the time of day?" He asks, eyes suddenly soft and honest, voice almost pleading. "Look, maybe I _am_ just busting out of the socials. But give me this exclusive, let me run with this story – and I _will_ get you the space."

"Wait," Romeo says from somewhere on Daisy's left that she isn't entirely aware of, too busy trying to add the boy in front of her up. "You could get us in the pape?"

He steps back from her, looking to Romeo – and the spell snaps as she clears her throat and tightens her arms across her chest, making her own step back.

"You stop a paper like the _World_ ," he tells him with that same special brand of soft genuine honesty, "and you will make the _front page_."

Silence answers his words, and Daisy glances sideways at Jemma – who still doesn't look entirely convinced. But her shoulders have relaxed and she at least has let her guard down, if only barely.

Daisy isn't sure if the decision is the right one, but she does think that it might just be worth the risk.

That _he_ might just be worth the risk.

"You want a story?" She says, filling the tentative space left between them as he turns to face her, eyes wide and receptive. "Be at the World gates tomorrow morning and you'll get one."

xx

He hangs around as the other boys and Jemma disperse out in the directions of the various boroughs, following Daisy as she walks out the door – pen and paper back in hand from his pocket.

"Now you really are following me," she notes, stopping when they reach the corner of the Deli to turn around and grin at him.

She is oddly relieved at the soft way he smiles back.

"I wanted to ask you some questions," he says, and she returns his eye roll.

"A likely story, Mr. Still Nameless _Reporter_."

She smirks fully as he joins her leaning up against the wall, pressing a cheek to the ice cold brick and staring down at her.

"Lincoln," he answers the unspoken question. "Lincoln… Campbell."

He hesitates oddly on his last name, and Daisy can't help but wrinkle her nose at him.

"What, aren't you sure?" She asks, pressing her own cheek to the wall in an attempt to find the appeal.

It is goddamn cold, and she pulls her face straight back upright.

"It's my byline," he answers, surprising her when he raises a hand, brushing warm fingers across the still-numb bit of her cheek. "The name I publish under."

"I _know_ what a byline is," she lies as he drops his hand back to his side quickly, like he almost didn't realize what he was doing.

A moment later he lifts his own head back up off of the wall, one cheek burned asymmetrically red – glancing down at his little notebook before meeting her gaze again.

"So what is your story, Daisy Johnson?" he asks, pronouncing her name deliberately against all his other soft and careful words.

She likes how he says her name, like how the boys say it when they are bragging about her mythos or trying to talk up her talents. She likes that he doesn't know any of it and still says her name like it is the name of someone important, someone bigger than she is.

She forgets to answer, and it makes him smile again.

"Are you selling newspapers to work your way through art school?" He follows up with genuine curiosity.

The question catches her entirely off guard, and she can't swallow the nervous chuckle that rises up the back of her throat at the odd assertion. His expression doesn't change, however, and she finally shakes her head slowly.

"No, Campbell," she says, "I am definitely not in art school."

He scribbles her unexceptional words.

"Well you're an artist," he says as he writes, sparing her a quick glance up from the page, eyebrows knotted seriously. "That drawing you did last night… you should be inside the paper illustrating it, not out selling it."

She stares dubiously back at him as he finishes scribbling down whatever it is he has managed to find interesting, beginning to feel the edge of defensiveness bite at the pit of her stomach.

"Well maybe that's not what I _want_ ," she retaliates, shifting on the wall and coming inadvertently closer to him when she does. He is warm – they are close but not _that_ close, but she can still feel heat gathering between them. And his _eyes_ , she thinks, are the color of the sky, the real sky behind all the layers of smoke and smog and dust in the city.

"Then tell me what it is you _want_ ," he says, nearly pleading, probably desperate for anything even remotely interesting about a girl she feels certain he has overestimated.

She can't help it – she waggles her eyebrows a bit, scanning his body briefly with her eyes alone.

"Can't you tell?"

He blinks, unamused, and as she smirks back at his blank expression, she notes how his cheeks are now a matching shade of pink.

"Have you always been their leader?" He quickly changes the topic, staring hard at his notebook and very pointedly not at her.

She scoffs again, and he sighs loudly in response to the reaction - enough to make her feel badly and search for a halfway-decent response.

"I'm not even particularly a leader now. Just a figurehead, really. Jemma is the brains."

"Modesty is _not_ a trait I expected in you," he muses under his breath, and it makes her smile grow because of the mere fact that he was expecting something of her, has thought of her beyond their two terribly brief encounters. She doesn't say anything about it. "Tell me about tomorrow," he goes on, "what are you hoping for?"

"Let's go back to what I'm hoping for tonight," she teases, because she is pretty sure it will make him go pink again – and he does.

She likes being the cause behind the subtle shifts in his carefully composed expressions, likes that that composure seems to slip, if only slightly, in her presence.

This time he scavenges together enough wits to glare at her.

"You are completely incapable of being professional, aren't you?"

She grins, but thinks again for a serious answer, something to help him and help her strike - something to get them heard.

"Today we stopped the local Newsies from selling the papes. Tomorrow we stop the wagons so that the papes don't get sold anywhere in the city."

Relief washes over his face and he hurries to record her words, moving his hand like he is afraid they will slip away if he doesn't trap them down quickly enough.

"Are you scared?" He asks, a single line forming across his forehead in the second unfamiliar showing of concern she has been on the receiving end of in the previous days.

She shrugs, turning off the wall and slightly away from where he stands, away from the pressure the cautiousness of his eyes pushes against her. If she is honest with herself – which she generally isn't – her heart hasn't quite slowed its frantic pulsing against her chest since she read the headline in the afternoon.

She is sure as _hell_ scared.

"Ask me again in the morning."

His pencil stills for a moment, and she can still feel his eyes on her.

"That's a good answer," he notes softly, before lead scrapes on paper a final time and she hears the notebook flip closed. "Goodnight, Miss Johnson."

She hears him take a step and whirls around, forgetting whatever pretense she is supposed to be holding up.

"Hey, where are you off to? It isn't even dinner yet!"

"I'll see you in the morning," he says past a soft and reassuring smile over his shoulder. "And off the record… Good luck, Daisy."

She watches him stride away from her a stretching moment longer before calling after him.

"Hey, Campbell!" She yells, waiting for him to glance back at her before she continues, softer but still with enough force to be heard. "Write it good. We've all got a lot counting on you."

xx

Brooklyn is not waiting for them at the front gates of the _World_ when they gather uneasily around it as the city wakes up – and neither are any of the other Newsies of New York.

"Is anyone else comin'?"

"Midtown said they'd be here, if Brooklyn was."

"Harlem too."

"Queens'll be right here backin' us up. As… soon as they get the nod from Brooklyn."

"Brooklyn… they want proof, Daisy. They want to know that we aren't going to crumble under the first wave of pressure before they commit themselves."

Daisy looks around the crestfallen frowns of the small group of boys – and she can see the resolve cracking, the excited energy of the morning before beginning to grow heavy in the face of reality, in the face of days without pay, the prospective debilitating, aching hunger they are all on far too close of a first name basis with.

It is just them, still. Their little family standing all on their own.

She can see in their eyes that they are debating their options, see the matching trend through all of their somber, dirty faces. They want to quit. They want to walk up to the circulation window, put up the extra money and pretend they aren't sulking off with their tails between their legs.

She isn't sure she is entirely opposed to the thought, herself.

"Maybe we oughtta put it off for a day," Spec murmurs uneasily, shifting his bag on his shoulders.

Daisy isn't surprised by the soft and hesitant noises of agreement that follow.

She is surprised by the adamant "No!" that sounds from Jemma, however. Every eye turns onto her with shock equivalent to what Daisy feels, and the other girl's cheeks burn slightly pink against the attention, her own wide eyes staring back at each of the boys in turn.

"We can't back off now," she says, voice softer as she shakes her head. "We _can't_. We back off now, they'll never take us seriously again. Not one of us can go up to that window."

This time, however, her clever words aren't quite enough.

Hunter shakes his head, watching her sadly.

"Whatever we do isn't going to make a difference," he says, defeated. "We don't have any backup. We can't do this on our own."

Jemma looks to Daisy, eyes pleading for her support – but her tongue is dry and her brain too sluggish to draw anything of any real meaning together.

"We should listen to Jemma," she manages halfheartedly – and it only leads more boys to shaking their heads, drifting back from the little group looking conflicted, debating their impossible duo of options.

It is falling apart, and she glances nervously back at Jemma, sharing her desperate gaze and trying to ignore how the air seems to thin around her at the prospect of failure. Of giving in.

"Sounds like we got some bum information about a strike happening here today," calls one of the Delancey's in a sing-songy tone as they approach the gate from inside, jangling keys sounding somehow like mockery.

No one talks back.

"How unfortunate," says the other in the same showy tone as his brother, as he comes straight up to where Daisy stands alone against the gate, the others all backed up to make way for it to open. "I was looking forward to smashing some of your boys' heads today."

She shoves the locked gate inwards in a flare of frustration, but doesn't even draw comfort from the startled manner in which he jumps back from the clanging metal before scowling at her and moving to unlock it, slow and deliberate.

He doesn't bother to open it or fight with her about moving out of his way, instead stalking back towards the wagons with his brother and leaving them alone at the unlocked gate.

She hears the small group of boys shifting anxiously behind her but she doesn't move, staring after the Delancey's and searching for the smallest ounce of motivation, the tiniest spark she might be able to gather enough strength to fan into a flame.

She is tired.

"Daisy," Romeo says gently, "maybe we should just put this off'a few days."

She doesn't answer, but feels someone come up beside her – prodding her shoulder _hard_.

"You have to say something," Jemma hisses under her breath. "Daisy, they'll listen to what you tell them but you _have_ to tell them _something_."

She shakes her head, staring out at where the wagons are just beginning to be filled with the papers that'll be circulated out to the rest of New York, regardless of what they do today.

"What the hell can I say?" She answers, only making a halfhearted attempt to match the lowered tone.

The boys anxious murmurs are heightening in volume.

"How about we jus' don't show up for work?" Fitz suggests, "That'd send th' message."

Daisy lets out a frustrated breath, turning away from the fence and the papers and Jemma to face the growing discourse.

"They'll just bring in scabs to replace us, Fitz," she says, voice snapping slightly beneath the weight of her words. "We have to stand our ground."

The words don't affect the changing temperament, and she feels herself giving up, giving into the pressure fighting against them.

She looks back at Jemma.

"Tell them," she says, voice breaking fully now as she steps back up to the gate, ignoring Jemma's noise of frustration.

There is a moment of hesitation, silence – and Daisy realizes with a bit of a start that the boys have quieted, waiting to hear what Jemma will say.

Jemma realizes it too, filling the silence with an uncomfortable clearing of her throat as she shifts back towards them, away from the gate.

"We're all scared," she says quietly. "But you boys are here. You came here to fight for yourselves, for your rights – yeah? And the rights of the boys all around town who aren't here, you're standing by them anyway. And… that is _brave_."

She pauses on the word – surely knowing the impact it will have on the assortment of street kids. Surely knowing how weighty it is, this application of the word to these boys who have so rarely been given affirmation by anyone in their lives.

But the _use_ of the word isn't entirely what strikes Daisy.

It is the truth that it wields.

"Being brave isn't about not being scared," Jemma continues, voice still quiet but gaining a new sense of drive, a new purpose. "But it _is_ about going through with what frightens you in spite of your fear. We're fighting for something and if we want to win, we have to carry through. We _have to_. And we have to do it today."

Another pause answered with still, stretching silence.

It is Fitz that breaks it.

"I made a banner, las' night," he says, voice only just louder than Jemma's – and Daisy finds herself glancing over her shoulder as he lifts his crutch to show off the tiny white flag he has secured to it made from a cloth from his bed – "STRIKE" sloppily written across it in a piece of her charcoal. He is smiling a little, shyly, eyes on Jemma.

It breaks the spell her words have cast over them, and when quiet murmurs fill their little circle again, the tone has changed entirely.

"That is pitiful," Hunter tells Fitz, who seems unphased by the blatant assertion.

"Don't be so quick to judge!" Les scolds, little voice standing out from the rest. "Maybe Pulitzer'll see it out his window and feel sorry for us!"

Daisy finally draws herself from the fence, stepping back up beside Jemma as she studies each of the boys faces in turn. They are still anxious, still jittery – but they are back with them.

She is careful to let the breath of relief out of her nose quietly, out of sight and sound.

"Everyone in?" She asks over their quiet noise, drawing their attention easily with the snap of two words.

They nod slowly.

The anxiety tangling and knotting in the pit of her stomach is worse than ever before, every eye watching her expectantly for their next move. She can't shake the feeling that she is still leading them into failure. A chill that has nothing to do with the cold air hurries down her spine and through her arms, and she has to clench her teeth to keep it from showing.

Jemma is right. She is _terrified_.

"Then let's go stop some wagons."

xx

The scabs push through them to get to the gate when they arrive, and Daisy has to physically hold back Romeo and Albert when the three replacements drop their coins in Weasel's waiting hand and grab their papers – most of the other boys are joining the growling anger at the intruders as well.

"We stand together or we _don't stand at all,_ " Jemma reminds Daisy anxiously over the ruckus, nervousness clear in the wringing of her hands.

Fitz catches on as quickly as Daisy does, placing himself pointedly between the strikers and the scabs who have cowered away in fright from their angry advances.

"I hear you," Daisy assures Jemma snappily, shoving her boys back again, hard, staring at them threateningly until she is convinced they won't go at the scabs, the _other_ _kids_ , again – and waiting for them to return to their stakes waiting for the wagons before she turns 'round to face the frightened expressions of the scabs.

"Listen, fellas, I know someone put you up to this, yeah?"

She is surprised when the smallest responds to her, nodding once uneasily. His knuckles are white around his papers, clothes just as ratty and torn as the boys behind her.

She makes a point of ignoring the hard scowl Wiesel fixes her with from behind the boys.

"Pulitzer thinks we're _nothing_ ," she says heatedly, fed by the unexpected response. "He thinks we're nothing more than gutter rats who'll crawl over anything to get to a penny – even each other. But we aren't. We can't stab _each other_ in the back, that's _not_ who we _are_. There are kids like us, all over this town – and you don't hear us complaining that we'd rather be in school, or playing games in the streets – than selling papes and working in sweatshops and factories and slaughterhouses, doing the hard work we do all day long. All we _all_ want is a fair deal."

The first of the boys is caving, the hand holding his papers quivering – and Daisy's pulse stutters a little when the tiniest spark of hope burns back up against her chest.

"We stand together," Fitz says, repeating Jemma's words as he limps up beside Daisy, "tha's th' only way we'll get heard. If you join our union, you' stand with us, an' with _all_ the kids."

The boy takes a small, sharply impulsive step closer – letting out a shaking breath before he drops his papers, shaking his head as if he knows just as well as the rest of them that he is making a mistake.

"I'm with you," he mutters, head still shaking, before glancing back at his companions. "At the end'a the day, who are you gonna trust?" He asks, voice sharp. "These guys –" he nods towards Fitz and Daisy, then disgustedly back at Wiesel and the Delancey's, "or them?"

The second boy lets out a similar caving sigh, letting his own papers plop to the hard ground before stepping weakly up even with the first boy.

Daisy hardly dares to breathe as she and everyone else's eyes fall to the final boy, who still clenches his papers tightly in his hand, face gone as pale as his knuckles.

The papers hit the ground.

The smirk melts right off of Wiesel's face.

The boys fall into line with the rest of the boys behind her, but a new buzz, a second wave of energy has finally settled fully into the formerly disenchanted union – the first demonstration of the power they wield together giving them a new life that nearly sets Daisy guard down.

"That was incredible."

She doesn't feel him come up beside her – somehow hasn't even noticed his presence – but even as she whirls to face the voice, she knows exactly who it is, if only by the accompanying noise of pencil scraping paper.

"So you did show," she says, even though she hadn't actually expected him not to. Her stomach flips into its usual traitorous turmoil when her eyes settle on him – he is wearing a tie in a deep shade of blue, slightly crooked on his neck – that does things to his light eyes that probably shouldn't be legal.

His pencil lifts as he stares down at her, eyebrows furrowing.

"I said I would, didn't I?" His expression lightens a bit, then, and he motions over his shoulder at some movement happening behind him, "brought a camera, too. Can't make front page without a nice shiny picture."

Her eyes go wide as she looks back at the excited pulse of the boys behind him, realizing that they are moving around a _photographer_ and his bulky camera, who is barking orders down at the eager kids. When she glances back at Lincoln, he is biting back a smile. While she _knows_ he is purposely playing down the full extent of what he has done, knows he is purposely acting casual for whatever godforsaken reason he might have – it still drives her _mad_.

"You want to make us a headline," she says in awe instead of snapping at him - and he just shrugs, still biting his lip – but a smile is clear and full in the light dancing in his eyes.

"Get over there, Johnson. It isn't a union without its brave leader."

She starts towards the camera, without needing too much further prompting, more enthusiastic than she would care to admit about the photograph – but then she hesitates, turning back to the reporter and staring up at him.

"Thank you," she says earnestly, careful to hold his gaze. She can't think of a joke to make, a way to lighten the strong pulse of emotion in her veins. She reaches out to him instead, touching his wrist gently.

She expects him to blush, but he just shakes his head, staring back at her with a soft, relaxed expression she has yet to see on him – something like focus, she thinks, but less searching. Less intrusive.

"This is all you," he says. "I'm just along for the ride, I guess."

She feels an unconscious pull nearer to him and almost gives in to it, but then a voice yells over, breaking her from the moment.

"Hey, kid – just waiting on your okay," the photographer calls to Lincoln, followed by the whine of a dozen boys for Daisy to get her ass over to them.

She drops his wrist.

"Go get in your picture," he says, nodding again at the rest of the boys.

This time she listens, smiling crookedly as she pushes easily through a few bodies to situate herself between Jemma and Fitz.

The camera flash flames bright and startling, burning against her eyes – and she has to blink hard for a moment after before she can see anything without a flare down the middle of it. If the boys had energy before – it was nothing compared to the frenzy that is overcoming them now, putting a new life into them that Daisy has never seen.

She feels it, too – the energy running through the moment, through the entire group of them. The excitement, the hopeful unexpectedness for tomorrow that has never quite been a part of their predetermined rituals. She can't quite assign it a label in her head, the intrepidation that burns in her veins.

And then the carts begin to roll out from behind the circulation window and everything happens too quickly for her to assign a label to it, either.

Les takes the first brave step to block a wagon, innocent confidence feeding his movements and inspiring the rest of the group to follow in turn. But single steps is about all they get before there are suddenly men pressing in on them from all directions.

Lincoln is back at her side, and as the hired fists press in around the boys she turns frantically to him.

"Get out of here," she tells him breathlessly, desperately, and when he opens his mouth to protest she presses on forcefully, "you aren't doing us any good here, I doubt you can throw a punch, and they'll never run the damn story if you get caught up in this."

He wastes a moment she could be back protecting the yelling boys behind her by pausing.

"Be careful, Daisy," he finally says reluctantly, taking a half a step away from her, towards the gate. "I – we all need you."

She nods, if only to appease him – waiting until he finally turns before she herself whirls around, trying frantically to take in everything happening at once. The dark-clothed men seem to be led by the Delancey brothers and are certainly the backup-plan to the hired scabs – a special kind of discouragement led by fists.

It is this type of hired muscle that landed half of the Trolley strikers in the hospitals.

She ducks into the fight when Les is thrown over the shoulder of one of the Delancey's, familiar rage billowing in her chest as she charges in, forgetting any sort of reasonable move she may have been able to play from outside the group.

It is how everything falls apart.

She hears the whistle of an officer just as she sinks a fist into the man's stomach, ducking nimbly away from the bat he swings one handed as she seeks out the police, temporary relief filling the pit of her stomach.

They're there to stop the hired muscle – to protect the kids getting their asses handed to them and let them settle back into their peaceful strike. They are going to help them.

Daisy catches a glimpse of Romeo out of the corner of her eye, near the group of approaching officers – throwing up an arm to defend his face from the bat one of the men swings at him.

She ducks another blow from Delancey, using the way the movement of his weight off-sets him to her advantage by grabbing Les and optimizing on the swing of the man's upper body to pull the little boy into her arms instead – half an eye on Romeo and his attacker, waiting for the cops to grab the weapon and arrest the man for attacking the kid.

Except, they _don't._

They join in with the muscle, without hesitation – coming at Romeo from all directions – and a breath catches in Daisy's throat as she feels that little glimmer of hope now smothered icily in her chest.

She shakily puts Les back on his feet, kneeling down on the hard ground and holding tight to his shoulders a moment – half of her attention on the men around them, watching her back.

"Run, kid," she tells him sharply, "run and get home fast as you can, don't stop for anyone, I don't care what they say."

He either understands the gravity of the situation more fully or trusts Daisy more unquestioningly than Lincoln, because he is off bolting for the _World_ gates as soon as she says the word – along with a few of the other boys.

It takes her a precious moment too long to realize why the boys- the never shy-away-from-a-fight stupid mess of a family she has - are scattering.

Then she hears Fitz's warning over the noises of fists and taunts and breaking skin.

"It's Snyder!"

The words distract her, though, and someone she doesn't see makes square contact to her stomach with a bat – knocking all the breath out of her and landing her hard on the ground, knuckles and knees scraping. Her vision is blurred, like from the camera flash but far darker – but she forces herself to focus on the sharp pain to keep herself from blacking out, weakly avoiding another strike from the bat by rolling onto her side and then forcing herself swaying and dizzy to her feet.

She clenches her fists, searching out the man who holds the offending bat and clumsily ducking beneath it, landing a few sharp hits before someone else comes at her from behind – loud enough to give her enough warning that their fist only glances her still-aching side.

She hears distant familiar yelling, desperate and scared, but she has three guys on her now and can't spare the extra attention as she ducks and jumps and punches and scrapes, still fighting with consciousness.

When her legs give out beneath her, two arms capture her from behind and she writhes frantically against them until she hears Hunter's voice in her ear as he drags her backwards.

"Bloody hell, it's me, _stoppit_ ," he whines, and she gets her footing as he half carries her through the gates, shoving them both into the first alley he finds. "Can you climb?"

She isn't sure if they've been followed out, but shouting is still echoing in her ears.

"Who's still back there?" She asks frantically as he gently guides her to a ladder of a fire escape, waiting not particularly patiently for her to climb up it.

"It's not important. Everyone who could get away did."

The words aren't at all what she wants to hear, and she pulls sharply back from the escape and him, pushing his steadying arm off of her – thinking of Jemma and her family, of Romeo surrounded by the men she expected to _save them_ – any of her friends, captured by Snyder and shoved away into the dark orphanage forever.

"Who is still back there, Hunter?!" She repeats sharply as she sways unevenly on her feet, taking another sharp step back when he reaches out for her again.

"I could get you or him, Daisy, _not_ both," he snaps defensively, and her heart thuds, remembering the distinct cries that had echoed against her, pleading as she fought off three men.

 _Fitz_.

She stumbles from the alley, leaving Hunter to get himself out alone – racing fast as she can back towards the _World_ , throwing her weight against the locked silver fence and straining to see back to the circulation window where the battle they had never stood a chance of winning had gone down.

The courtyard is empty.

Her best friend is gone.

xx

She doesn't know how much a ticket for the train costs but she knows that she doesn't have enough even before she scrambles blindly up the ladder to her little penthouse, trying to ignore Fitz's small pile of possessions abandoned now permanently at the other end of the metal structure. She digs beneath her bed, pulling the carefully arranged pieces apart as she grabs her little bag of saved coins from their hiding place beneath it, tearing it open and shaking the icy metal into her shaking palm.

There is blood staining her knuckles, and she is too numb to be entirely aware of whether it is hers or someone else's.

The coins barely cover her skin, and she shakes harder as she shoves them all in her pocket anyway.

She can't just stand by and watch her boys, her _family_ , beaten and kidnapped and hurt because of a decision she made, a decision they supported because they _trusted_ her.

She doesn't even know that Fitz will make it – not with a bum leg like his in a place like the Refuge all on his own.

A sudden burst of frustrated rage overwhelms her, and she throws it all at the shaky railing of the escape in an uncoordinated sharp movement, cold skin splitting on harsh contact with the rusted metal – the structure whining out in harmony with the angry noise that roars past her lips.

She has got her goddamn headline alright – Newsies slaughtered, their pitiful strike stampeded into the grey cracking streets alongside the rats where they belong.

She can't stay, can't stick around when she knows as long as she does the boys will keep fighting and bleeding for her _impulsive, stupid, reckless, selfish_ choice.

She takes a ragged breath, only realizing when the air catches icily in her throat that she has been crying. Her gaze reaches up beyond the city, catching the last glimpses of dusky gold in the sky as the sun disappears behind the suffocating black skyline.

She has to get out.

xx

 **NEWSIES STOP THE WORLD**

story by: Lincoln Campbell

 _With all eyes fixed on the Trolley Strike, there's another battle brewing in the city. A modern day_

 _David is poised to take on the rich and powerful Goliath. With the swagger of one twice her age,_

 _armed with nothing more than a few nuggets of truth, Daisy Johnson stands ready to face the_

 _behemoth Pulitzer…_


End file.
